Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part 2

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What does the company do and how many employees do you have?

We provide a worldwide infrastructure platform to manage data across all segments of structured and unstructured enterprise data. So we help companies organize their data, improve their application performance, put their inactive data into storage, and improve the quality of their storage. We have 100 employees.

You're a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (www.tie.org). What is that group and how has it helped you and other immigrants?

It's a networking association originally started by Indian entrepreneurs and engineers in Silicon Valley in 1992. The focus is on business development, support, providing education for future entrepreneurs, and giving back to the community. It really has helped create energy, synergy, and a social system for Asian Indian immigrants and other entrepreneurs. They have 10,000 members in nine countries now, including England, South Africa, and Israel, and they're going beyond technology into other industries.

There's a lot of opposition—maybe even a backlash—to the practice of outsourcing and offshoring, which often employs people based in India. Does that come up in your business and social interactions?

Certainly. There is a fear mechanism working in the U.S. right now. When our economy went down, there was Lou Dobbs talking, and it created a lot of excitement. I'm not in the offshore game. I am creating value, creating jobs and employment here. The people I talk to get inspired by new ideas rather than by low costs or cutting costs. What I do is psychologically ask myself: What am I doing? Am I helping society? Am I doing the right things in my business? It's too much for one individual to face and answer all these large societal questions.

What is the toughest part of being an Indian immigrant entrepreneur?

The communication piece is difficult, primarily because of my accent and being able to mix in 100% with society. I sometimes wonder if that does come in between me and potential clients.

Since you came here 20 years ago, you've become a business and technology thought leader and you now do public speaking in many forums. What does your family think of you?

Most of my family is still in Hyderabad. They are very proud of what I've achieved. I have a younger brother here who works for Cisco, developing technology. He's more of a hard-core engineer, not an entrepreneur at heart.